Loneliness

I really enjoy the Kurzgesagt videos.  Sometimes I digest information better and think about things more deeply when I read it.  All credit goes to the creators.  

In the UK, 60% of 18-34 year olds say they often feel lonely.
In the US, 46% of the entire population feel lonely regularly.  

Being lonely and being alone are not the same thing.  You could be filled with bliss by yourself and hate every second surrounded by friends.

Loneliness is a purely subjective, individual experience.  If you feel lonely, you are lonely.  

A common stereotype is that loneliness only happens to people who don't know how to talk to people, or how to behave around others.  But population based studies have shown that social skills make practically no difference for adults when it comes to social connections.  

Loneliness can affect everybody: money, fame, power, beauty, social skills, a great personality.  Nothing can protect you against loneliness because it's part of your biology.  

What is loneliness?
Loneliness is a bodily function, like hunger.  Loneliness makes you pay attention to your social needs. 
  
Social pain is early warning system to helps stop behaviour that would isolate you.

In the US, the mean number of close friends dropped to 2 in 2011

Most people stumble into chronic loneliness by accident.  You reach adulthood and become busy with work and stuff.  There's just not enough time.  The most convenient and easy thing to sacrifice is time with friends.  Until you wake up one day and realize that you feel isolated; that you yearn for close relationships.  But it's hard to find close connections as adults and so, loneliness can become chronic.  

How loneliness kills
Large scale studies have show that the stress that comes from chronic loneliness is among the most unhealthy things we can experience as humans.  It makes you age quicker, it makes cancer deadlier, Alzheimer's advance faster, your immune systems weaker.  

Loneliness is twice as deadly as obesity and as deadly as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.  The most dangerous thing about it is that once it becomes chronic, it can become self-sustaining.  Physical and social pain use common mechanisms in your brain.  Both feel like a threat, and so, social pain leads to immediate and defensive behaviour when it's inflicted on you.  

When loneliness becomes chronic, your brain goes into self-preservation mode.  It starts to see danger and hostility everywhere.

Some studies found that when you're lonely, your brain is much more receptive and alert to social signals, while at the same time, it gets worse at interpreting them correctly.  You pay more attention to others but you understand them less.  The part of your brain that recognises faces gets out of tune and becomes more likely to categorize neutral faces as hostile, which makes it distrustful of others.  

Loneliness makes you assume the worst about others' intentions towards you.  Because of this perceived hostile world, you can become more self-centered to protect yourself.  Which can make you appear more cold, unfriendly and socially awkward than you really are.

What can we do about it?
Recognize the vicious cycle:
An initial feeling of isolation leads to feelings of tension and sadness, which makes you focus your attention selectively on negative interactions with others.  This makes your thoughts about yourself and others more negative, which then changes your behaviour.  You begin to avoid social interaction, which leads to more feelings of isolation.. 

This cycle becomes more severe and harder to escape each time. 

Loneliness makes you decline invitations until the invitations stop.  Each and every one of us has a story about ourselves, and if your story becomes that people exclude you others pick up on that, and so the outside world can become the way you feel about it.  This is often a slow creeping process that takes years, and can end in depression and a mental state that prevents connections, even if you yearn for them.

The first thing you can do to escape it is to accept that loneliness is a totally normal feeling and nothing to be ashamed of.  Literally everybody feels lonely at some point in their life, it's a universal human experience.  You can't eliminate or ignore a feeling until it goes away magically, but you can accept that you feel it and get rid of its cause.  

You can self- examine what you focus your attention on, and check if you are selectively concentrating on negative things:
Was this interaction with a colleague really negative, or was it really neutral or even positive?
What was the actual content of an interaction?
What did the other person say?
And did they say something bad, or did you add extra meaning to their words?
Maybe another person was not really reacting negatively, but just short on time.

Then there are your thoughts about the world:
Are you assuming the worst about others' intentions?
Do you enter a social situation and have already decided how it will go?
Do you assume that others don't want you around?
Are you trying to avoid being hurt and not risking opening up?
And if so, can you try to give others the benefit of the doubt?
Can you just assume that they're not against you?
Can you risk being open and vulnerable again?

And lastly, your behaviour:
Are you avoiding opportunities to be around others?
Are you looking for excuses to decline invitations?
Or are you pushing others away preemptively to protect yourself?
Are you acting as if you're getting attacked? 
Are you really looking for new connections, or have you become complacent with your situation?

Seeking help is not a sign of weakness but of courage.

However we look at loneliness, as a purely individual problem that needs solving to create more personal happiness, or as a public health crisis, it is something that deserves more attention. 

Humans have built a world that's amazing but none of the things we've made is able to satisfy or substitute our fundamental biological need for connection.  We get what we need from each other and we need to build our artificial human world based on that. 

Reach out to someone today, regardless if you feel a little bit lonely, or if you want to make someone else's day better.  Maybe write a friend you haven't spoken to in a while.  Call a family member who's become estranged.  Invite a work buddy for a coffee.  Or just go to something you're usually to afraid to go to or too lazy to go to, like a D&D event or a sports club.  

Maybe nothing will come of it, and that's okay.  Don't do this with any expectations.  The goal is just to open up a bit; to exercise your connection muscles, so they can grow stronger over time, or to help others exercise them.